This is an account of my experience at the Occupy Wall Street movement in Portland, Oregon in November 2011 with my boyfriend, Richard and his friend, Jason who worked as a cameraman for the local news station, KATU. It was also my first stab into the world of journalism as an independent reporter on a mission to find out the true motives of the people who came out in solidarity against the 1%.Steady we walk up the hill and down the road. Slippery fall leaves are peeled and stuck to the shiny bricks that line the ground. The air outside is cool and transparent, late on its way to some other part of the city. A pale blue sky and right angles of buildings make up our horizon. It is cold so say our fingers and toes. Keep moving. We come to a crowd. "Demonstrators from the Steel Bridge are on the move. MAX and bus service may be disrupted. Riders should expect delays." The screen at our stop sends a warm shiver of adrenaline to my frosty limbs and our knowledgeable friend is quick with a thought. We will walk to our destination, he explains as he turns his KATU news team jacket inside out. The first turn greets us with emptiness and quiet. A slick downward track and windblown leaves make a crossing between alleyways. We hear nothing and move forward. The second curve leads us down to the right and into a similar scene. Similar up until the end of the block where the sun shines through the buildings, hits the wet black asphalt and beams up with a blinding white light. I feel like we are mice in a grid walking briskly towards the trap. In the light bounce persuasive souls, whose will does not address us, but moves forward into the left, on the tail end of this massive gambit. To our guide this is a familiar scene, one sought over the past month through continuing news coverage. He does not want to be seen here by his colleagues or by the protesters. The 99 percent of this movement hate mainstream media, and he will be picked out of the crowd like a flea on the back of their cause. His comrades on the other hand, the news team, would look upon him as a two-timer, and a double-crosser if they found him running with these demagogues on his morning off. He is friendly, yet aloof, and for a short time disappears as I interview in the heat of things. So the three of us look at each other in agreement. We have found something more important than getting coffee on this Thursday morning in Portland. There is a bit of history going on Downtown, and we intend to infiltrate it. I walk taller and with purpose now, as if to convince myself that I mean business. I feel inside my pocket with one gloved hand for my voice recorder and fumble after for my notebook with the half-brilliant questions it stores. The noise that was directed down one side of the street, envelopes us now as we get to the corner, and into the core of Portland's financial district. We are collected by the mere energy of it, and are now inside the occupation. Megaphones blasting and fixed voices fill up the street alongside thousands of bodies brimming with intent. I am handed flyers left and right condemning the malpractice of these towering Goliaths, and some explain the reasoning behind the heart of this movement. A round of applause breaks out across the street as a small victory takes place in front of the Standard Insurance Center, and the bulk of the crowd moves back toward us in front of Bank of America. I am searching the signs and reading the eyes of the group, now coming our direction. I stop a bearded man holding a sign who resembles Allen Ginsberg and ask him to talk to me. He represents a non-profit healthcare co-op and rightly blames insurance companies for leaving their customers high and dry and sucking revenue out of the country. He is articulate, resolute and leaves with me the message to get involved now and take pride in the work to be done, instead of joining the movement later to claim all the glory. He gives me a smile and a business card then keeps up with the march. Everyone swarms past me now, I am alone in the crowd with my digi-corder, a near enemy. I hear sirens close behind. There is an old veteran waving an American flag cussing at an upscale businessman he sees on the street. A group of young performers complete a skit in front of Bank of America with colorful dress and clown makeup on. Applause dies out and the echo of plans and information is communicated to different parts of the crowd. It is time for me to find my boyfriend and his friend, and for us to devise a plan of our own. We band together and push through a city that had just introduced itself to me the night before. The sights, sounds and eruptions are all around as I continue on my unique tour. We walk through Pioneer Square and pass by the corporate suited guards who stare from the front steps watching with amusement and dismay. I talk with students who have hopped from other occupy movements, and I interview Medics who have contributed full-time assistance emotionally as well as medically since day one. I see children pushed in strollers by protesting parents, adolescents hand in hand with the elderly, the affluent and the hard-up, all in this whimsical otherwise harmonious place, to stand up for what is right. I am feeling good now, and vividly taking on what has brought us here. The solidarity I once questioned is gone. It's a feeling that no network can manufacture or broadcast, a feeling of truth in standing up for the greater good. That the diversity and uniqueness of each separate circumstance serves as a puzzle piece to what has gone so desperately wrong , and what can be done to correct it. The energy is electric in the air as we turn and head back towards SW 5th Ave. As we tramp up the street, the crowd is forced to bottleneck to make it through. We cramp and squeeze in order to make it forward, when we see our news crew friend waving us down. He had taken the street adjacent to us when he saw a fellow camera man, and came back to tell us the scoop, all before I even realized he was gone. We took route with him a different way and came out on the other side of the street to find mobilized cops in every fashion creating a barricade. Cops on bikes, cops on motorcycles, cops on horses and mostly, cops in riot gear. The day's faceoff had begun, and we were right at the head of it. The people cheered and jeered at the position they found themselves, and the group was ever tightly packed. More and more police poured into the street creating a parade of force and power, their black suits and weapons in stark contrast to the colorful, diplomatic, and peaceful, protestors. It was clear now, through all the yelling and signs and chants, and people dying to be heard, the opposition would not be listening. Almost immediately a loudspeaker trumps the crowd, and a very professional woman, in a very professional voice informs the people to vacate the street. My temperature rising, I am puzzled trying to figure out exactly how getting thousands of people off of the street and onto the sidewalk is going to make anything better. How will they ever be heard? Will the problems that plagued them last night and came with them this morning be accounted for and take responsibility as they are now being asked to do? If they break the law in a more orderly fashion or behind billions of dollars, would it be acceptable then? In a society where the average citizen is taught they can change the world if they only dare to try, the same citizens are now being told to stand idly by as their home, livelihood, and country so deliberately gets swept under the rug and falls beneath the cracks. They scream in the frosty air, faces rosy from the strain and the words behind them dissipate like the vapors from their lips. They are fighting now against a brick wall that sees and hears on a different frequency. Apathetic minds with unwavering eyes await orders and recall training exercises. They see not people before them, but an ugly ravenous beast that needs to be caged. The woman's voice continues monotonously while waves of emotion wash up through the crowd onto a wall of force that deflects the electricity and turns it into instant static. Not many people have the opportunity to tip-toe the tight wire between opposing sides of a war, and it felt like any second anything could happen. A protestor cries out in anger and a seasoned officer balks. Sirens blare. More officers arrive on the scene ready for a clash as any sign of delegation turns to fight or flight. Vans of officers pour in like shots of anti-venom. A few scuffles start up, and it's enough to make us compare the price of a cup of coffee to the amount of bail bonds. We, floating in the balance, (and much to the appeasement of our friend) decide that it's time to talk the scene over in a much safer arena. At some point the rest of the people I met came to the same conclusion. Whether it was in jail or in another nook of the city, I do not know. We are here now, each with separate visions of what has unfolded.I caught the wilted eyes of a passing officer. I realized then, that both sides were actually fighting for the same thing: To provide for their family. To have a home, and be granted affordable healthcare. To watch their children grow up. To feel like they have a voice that matters. To understand that true justice applies to everyone. The extravagances shared by some can never overcome the innate human rights given to all of us. Truth is unchanging and will always stand on the side of the exploited, and that a country founded on such values would be forever meaningless to squander its ideals so frivolously. Now, obviously this is not how this world works. Different forms of justice tend to cancel each other out, especially where Money and Power lend a hand. These are mere tools disguising and manipulating shades of truth. But if we could only listen, and if we could only see for one moment, as one organism, that we are all inherently the same. That we want the same basic things out of life. That we do not need to complicate things so much as we need to take care of each other. This is truth unchanging from the clarity of generations before, but it is reality that baffles me. More marches will be scheduled and more wars will be fought, most not so lucky to refrain from casualties. The world and all of its technology is only getting smaller. And it makes me wonder, in the grand scheme of things, why is it that we have come so far only to destroy ourselves?